Taking on the IMDB Top 250

Growing up, my family didn’t really watch a whole lot of movies. My dad would occasionally take us to the theater to see the new, big action flick and I distinctly remember him taking me to see Princess Diaries (what a good dad), but other than the Disney movies and the ones we begged him to take us to see, we didn’t go much.

This is for several reasons, really. My mom doesn’t like movies – she only enjoys seeing very clean, “family-friendly” movies, and even then she’s really just not interested. Another reason is that we didn’t have a whole lot of money, and with a family of six people, going to the movies was expensive even on an early Saturday morning. It just wasn’t in the budget.

Andrew on the other hand, watched movies all the time with his mom growing up. We were recently talking about all of the movies that were considered “classics” or the “best of all time” that we (and by we I mean mostly me) have never seen. We both enjoy watching movies, and there were so many movies we wanted to watch that we just never have. So we thought it would be a fun challenge to watch all of these culturally classic movies by consulted the IMDB Top 250 Movies list.

If you’re not familiar, IMDB (Internet Movie Database) is a website which does exactly what its name suggests. Users can also rate movies, and I’m not sure what their exact algorithm is but IMDB puts together a list of the top movies of all time. We picked the top 250 list.

We saved a copy of the list to Excel and dated it, that way if any movies were taken off the list or added to it, it wouldn’t set us back. Our goal is to watch all 250 movies. We haven’t given ourselves a time limit – that is a lot of movies and if we watched a movie a week, it would take at least four years (we’ve crossed off movies we both have already seen). Some weeks we may watch three or four movies, and then there may be two weeks where we don’t watch any. We want to have fun with it and not make it a chore, so by not setting ourselves a “to be done by” date, I think we will really enjoy it.

Before we started the challenge, we had both seen about 45 of the movies on the list. If one of us had seen it, but the other hadn’t, we didn’t count it. We both have to have seen the movie to cross it off.

We’re still establishing rules – and by that I mean arguing about the rules. I think that we should each be allowed at least two vetos. 250 movies is, again, a lot of movies, and I can think of several that I have no desire of watching. I don’t like a lot of vulgarity so I know that I will absolutely hate The Wolf of Wall Street, however much I do love Leonardo DiCaprio. I think I should be able to use a veto. Andrew believes that we have to watch every single movie, otherwise when we say “We watched all 250 IMDB top movies!” we also have to provide a disclaimer that we skipped a few. I know of a few that Andrew really doesn’t want to watch, so I’m hoping I can persuade him that we don’t have to watch them if he uses a veto.

What do you think? Should we be able to skip a few movies, or should we watch every single one so that we can truly say we watched the IMDB Top 250?

11 thoughts on “Taking on the IMDB Top 250”

I think it’d be fun to attempt to watch everything on the 250 list! I wouldn’t try and let personal tastes interfere too much and just watch it and then even joke about how bad it was or whatever. I know you don’t like vulgarities, and I’m the same, too, but I watched Pulp Fiction, and I’m glad I watched it at least once because it was just that mind-blowing and good if you can figure out the ingenious plot structure. But that’s just me. I think if there are movies you two are really not interested, then skip them ^^ Nothing wrong with that either.

This sounds like such a great challenge and adventure at the same time!! I agree that there should be a veto in place, because like you, I don’t like too much vulgar or too much violence, and even worse, psychological thrillers – I get nightmares upon days and then lose a little faith in humanity. But some of the older classics are still worth to plow it through, like Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, The Godfather, Scar Face (unfortunately out of all of these I’ve only seen The Godfather). Are you planning to do movie reviews on your blog as you go? It would be fun to see your point of view on them as you watch them!

Looks like I’ve seen 62 movies on the list, so I’m not much better, haha. 250 movies is a lot to see! There’s many classics I’ve missed out on, too, that I keep meaning to watch. While I was going down the list, I also saw many that I totally meant to see in theaters but just missed out on them. This reminds me that I need to go back and watch some of them.

I think you guys should do vetoes! Some of the ones I’ve seen on the top 250 list I didn’t think were that great, and there are some on the list I really have no intention of ever seeing, due to their genre. Even if they’re rated in the top 250, doesn’t mean you’ll like them all

That’s a great challenge, and I know you’ll be able to do that, but remember you guys should have vetoes, which I agree with Cat on. A lot of those movies you may not like, but like I always say, CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

That is such a great challenge to watch those movies. Personally I think you should try and watch all of them. If you really don’t like one, don’t force yourself, but you can say you at least tried or give it a ‘low rating’.

I love to watch movies. I also use Lettterboxd to track the ones I have seen, which is fun. But you can do that via IMDB as well.

if i could like this post a million times, i would. this is one of my dream things-to-do in a relationship just because i love movies so much! so whoever my future life partner will be should also love movies.

if you’re gonna ask me, becca, YES! you should see every movie on the list! i like your conditions too, that if andrew has seen a particular movie but you haven’t, then you won’t scratch it off the list. (and you two would watch it together instead!)

and yeah, there will always be those kind of movies that you can’t bring yourself to watch because of language or theme… but i think that you should still see them. you’ll never know, you might find something new to like or justify your hate on a certain subject! (is that a valid reason? haha.)

I was like you when I was little, my parents never took me out to see movies. But because of a different reason – they just didn’t like us going out at all. So I was a pretty deprived kid when it comes to going out. I remember just watching a lot of movies on TV.

It’s only till recently when I’m a little older, with my own money, I got to go watch movies in the cinema. Recently I’ve watched Hunger Games, which was fabulous btw. Go see it! Me and my boyfriend have a list of movies we’re going to watch/have to watch together too!